Rest in Peace Mark Forster

A Message from Mark Forster’s Son

It is with deep sadness that I share the news of my father, Mark Forster’s passing. He died peacefully in his sleep late on Sunday, 12th October 2025, without pain.

For nearly a year, my father had been living with Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS), a condition that arose following two previous battles with cancer. In recent months, MDS affected his memory, making it increasingly difficult for him to manage his website.

Get Everything Done has been a central part of his life since he published his first book over twenty years ago. He took great joy in the community that grew around it and was proud to play even a small role in helping others improve their lives.

On his behalf, I would like to thank everyone who contributed to Get Everything Done - whether through conversation, support, or shared ideas. Your presence meant a great deal to him.

Matthew

Special Offer!

The Kindle version of my book “Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management” is available on amazon.co.uk for the remainder of November for 99p.                               

Lenten Challenge 2024

This year’s Lenten Challenge starts on Wednesday 14th February and ends on Thursday 28 March, both dates inclusive.

The challenge is to keep to the same time management system for the whole period. You can enter the challenge by nominating which system you are going to follow in the Comments below. The system does not have to be one of mine. You can change your entry up until the start date (your local time).

This is not intended to imply, include or exclude any religious belief whatever.

Entries:

Voluntas: Dreams

Vegheadjones: The Bounce

Paul MacNeil: Autofocus 1

Ryan Freckleton: Resistance Zero

Topher Jake: SMEMA

avrum: Touchstone System

Brenda: DWM2

Sev: 5T

Brent: DIT with index cards

Mike Brown: Simple Scanning

Will: FVP

Pablo: Simple Scanning/Bullet Journal

Alan Baljeu: RTM/Lapse

Caibre 62: Anchored AF2

Aaron Hsu: Time Surfing

Austin: Do More Better

Fintan: DIT (Work & Personal)

Mark Forster: FV

Will: FVP

Adam T: FVP

Brandon: Dreams

Bence: Anchored AF2

Margaret1: RTM

Cameron: Dan Charnas’ Work Clean

Arneo K: FVP-NQ-FVP with New Question

Tobba: Seraphim’s RTM System

David: Dreams

ChatGPT's Opinion of Me

Yes, I am familiar with Mark Forster. Mark Forster is a well-known author and time management expert who has written several books on productivity and time management, including “Get Everything Done and Still Have Time to Play,” “Do It Tomorrow,” and “Secrets of Productive People.”

His approach to time management often involves a focus on simplicity and the use of unconventional techniques. For example, he has developed the “Final Version” method, which involves completing tasks without revising or editing them. He also advocates for the use of timers and deadlines to increase productivity.

Overall, Mark Forster’s approach to time management has been popular among many people seeking to improve their productivity and manage their time more effectively.

Lenten Challenge 2023

This year’s Lenten Challenge starts on Wednesday 22nd February and ends on Thursday 6th April, both dates inclusive.

The challenge is to keep to the same time management system for the whole period. You can enter the challenge by nominating which system you are going to follow in the Comments below. The system does not have to be one of mine. You can change your entry up until the start date (your local time).

This is not intended to imply, include or exclude any religious belief whatever.

Entries:

Mark Forster: Halving

Caibre 65: Simple New System

Ian S: Dreams/No List

eiron: Prioritised Shuffling

Alan Banjeu: LAPS

Seraphim: Randomizer Execute/Explore Variant

Pablo: Simple Scanning

Kohl: AF4+3T

Brenda: Timed Bursts with Rotating List

Jacqueline: Simple New System

Aaron Hsu: Frog and Chain

Colin: Make Time (Knapp + Zeratsky) + Resistance Zero

Margaret 1: Serial No List

David: Dreams

Eric SP: DIT

Mike Brown: Ultra Simple Guide to Time Management

Paul MacNeil: Simple Scanning

Ryan Freckleton: Resistance Zero

Tobba: Random RAF

vegheadjones: Persona Kanban feeding into 3T

Ville: DIT

Will Ross: FVP (late entry 28 Feb)

Fintan: DIT (late entry 1 Mar)

Ed Z: Elastic AF (late entry 4 Mar)

Blog Now Fully Back to Normal (I think)

This blog is now back to normal as far as I can see. Apparently the whole upset was caused by one misplaced “>” in an HTML sequence in a post. As there are a huge number of posts on this blog, it took a long time to track down.

Troubles always come in threes, so they say, and I was also having unrelated problems at the same time with my domain name (markforster.net) and my email address. I am pleased to say that these have now been fixed too.

As a result:

1) you can use markforster.net or markforster.squarespace.com as before

2) you can email me on either mf@markforster.net or markforster@aol.com. It doesn’t matter which you use, but please don’t use both at the same time

Thanks everyone for your patience.

Resistance Zero: Amendment/Recommendation

As I’ve gained more experience with the Resistance Zero system, I’ve found that it works a bit better if the scan is done from the beginning to the end, and the dotted tasks are then actioned from the end to the beginning. 

I’m also personally finding that it works best if the scan is done quickly without any lengthy attempts to decide whether a task is at zero resistance. So I say “No Resistance” at the start of the scan, but don’t repeat it again during the same scan.

How Yesterday's New System (Resistance Zero) Compares with Other Systems

Yesterday’s new system is based on using scanning to reduce resistance. Many other time management systems use scanning a list to select what to do next. How do they compare for the purpose of lowering resistance?

Yesterday’s system (I must give it a proper name - suggestions? Resistance Zero)

The whole list is scanned in one go, which allows for one’s mind to do a mini-assessment of every task on the list. This allows for all factors to be taken account of, and also allows the mind to advance each task in readiness.

FV and FVP

Both these systems use scanning to compare tasks in order to create a “resistance ladder”. After a complete scan, further scans are only done over a restricted portion of the list. This means that many tasks are done which are not at zero resistance. This increases the energy needed to do them and also keeps resistance to the list as a whole quite high.

Autofocus

In this system and its variants only one page at a time is scanned so resistance is not lowered on any of the other pages. Instead of being done at zero resistance, all the tasks are done which are below the maximum tolerable resistance. This does have the effect of reducing resistance to the other tasks on the page, but only while that page is being worked on. Again resistance to the list as a whole can build up quite rapidly.

Simple Scanning

Only a small portion of the list is scanned each time and tasks are done up to the maximum tolerable resistance. 

————————————-

Basically what the new system offers over these systems is a much faster reduction of resistance, plus only having to do tasks for which there is no resistance at all. The result is increased speed, less effort and no resistance to the system as a whole.

Resistance: How to Make the Most of It - The Resistance Zero System

Following up from my post yesterday, here is a simple system to make resistance a positive in your work and activities instead of the negative that it is for most people.

1. Write out a list of the things you have to do. You can build the list up gradually, but the aim is to eventually cover everything in your life that doesn’t happen on a set-time basis. You can add further tasks at any time.

2. Starting at the end of the list, scan back through the list dotting every task which you feel zero resistance to doing. 

3. Starting from the end, take at least some action on every task you’ve dotted. Re-enter as necessary.

4. Repeat Steps 2-4.

NOTES:

1) Zero resistance means absolutely no resistance whatsoever. 

2) You must do a complete scan at Step 2 so that every task is considered. This is very important, because it is the scanning process that reduces the resistance you feel for each task. If you skip or foreshorten the scan, resistance will rise instead of fall.

3) This is intended to be a fast scan, so that your brain selects the tasks for action action without conscious thought. It’s similar though not identical to the “standing out” process used in many of my systems.

Resistance: The Key Time Management Concept

The more I think about it and the more experience I get, the more I realise that the key to good time management is how one handles resistance.

I don’t mean resistance by other people to our brilliant ideas. I mean the resistance we have ourselves to what we know we should be doing. Imagine for a second what it would be like if you had no resistance to any of your work. Wouldn’t you just sail through it, getting everything done when it should be done without any reluctance or struggle to get going or keep going. Everything in your life would be beautifully ordered and you’d be able to look back with pride on your ongoing achievements.

Or would you?

Doesn’t resistance have an important role to play? Without it there would be a danger of taking on far too much, taking on tasks which you are not properly qualified to do or which you haven’t properly researched, and in short behaving like an over-revved engine. Resistance in other words is an important tool provided by nature to prevent us from getting into trouble or danger.

So it’s not a question of abolishing resistance, but of learning to handle it properly. 

Years ago I wrote about an interesting phenomenon concerning resistance. I realised that in a list of tasks of varying degrees of resistance, every time you scan the list the resistance to the tasks you haven’t selected decreases. This is actually the basis of those of my systems which use intuitive scanning. You can test this yourself by drawing up a short list of tasks, marking each out of 10 for the amount of resistance you feel to it, doing a scan and then re-marking the remaining tasks before you do the next scan.

Why does this effect happen?

I think it’s because every time you scan the list you do a micro-assessment of each task. On each scan of the task the micro-assessment changes because your brain has been working on it subconsciously between scans. The task actually becomes more approachable with each scan. If this doesn’t happen with a particular task, it’s probably a sign that you shouldn’t be doing it at all.

A problem with many time management systems is that they encourage you to action tasks too early in the process. This has two possible results, one good, one bad.

The bad one is that forcing yourself to do tasks in spite of your resistance to them, has the effect of raising your resistance to screaming point, and you take refuge in valueless displacement activities.

The good one is that forcing yourself to act in spite of your resistance will eventually teach your brain how to handle resistance itself much better. But this is at the cost of properly “softening up” the tasks. You will therefore be spending much more mental energy.

In my next post I’m going to suggest a way of making effective use of the reduction in resistance caused by the scanning process.

Some Suggested Improvements to NQ-FVP

The two main problems with NQ-FVP are 1) it tends to be rather inflexible, and 2) it concentrates too much on the end of the list where the new and re-entered tasks congregate, to the exclusion of the beginning of the list where the older and unstarted tasks congregate.

I am experimenting with a couple of small changes to the rules which improve both these aspects. These are:

1) When you’ve done a task (and re-entered it if necessary) you can go directly to the previous dotted task if you wish, without having to scan to the end of the list.

2) You are limited to two dotted tasks per scan. This does not include the root task at the beginning of the list. Note that this is two dotted tasks per scan, not two dotted tasks on the list. You can do a scan with two dots, do one of the tasks and then do another two-dot scan, and so on.

My three or four hours’ experience so far is that this gets rid of the lengthy scanning process and removes most of the frustration of being stuck at one end of the list with a whole load of tasks between you and the work you know you should be doing.

If anyone wants to try this out at the same time as me, I’d welcome your experiences and comments.

Some Aspects of NQ-FVP (Part 3)

In Part 2 I said that I would deal with how NQ-FVP can be used as a long list, a short list and a no-list system, all at the same time.

In fact this is very simple because the system naturally suits itself to isolating a group of tasks at the end of the list where they can be dotted and re-dotted as much as is required.

To do this, decide which tasks on your NQ-FVP list you want to be in your short list or no-list, dot them and move them to the end of the NQ-FVP list by the usual method of doing and re-entering them.

Alternatively you can move them by reprioritising your list. This is done by deleting the relevant tasks and re-entering them at the end of the list. Either way you have moved the tasks to the end of the list where you can action them as many times as required. This is very flexible because you can include other tasks on the NQ-FVP list as much or as little as you like.

You can use the same technique with Simple Scanning though it is less flexible.

Some Aspects of NQ-FVP (Part 2)

Yesterday in the first part of this article I wrote about why I keep coming back to NQ-FVP, and promised that in part 2 I would answer the question of why I keep leaving NQ-FVP in the first place.

It’s a question which I haven’t seriously asked of myself until now. So the answers I come up with will be just as interesting to me as to anyone else, and possibly more so.

The easy short answer is that I am always looking for the perfect system and, although I feel that NQ-FVP isn’t the perfect system, it’s the best I have.

That raises a lot of questions which are much more difficult to answer: 

• Is it actually possible to have a perfect system?
• What would the perfect system look like?
• Am I right in thinking that NQ-FVP isn’t the perfect system?
• Are there changes I could make so that NQ-FVP becomes the perfect system?

Is it actually possible to have a perfect system?

I think the answer must be “no” and for the same reason that there’s no perfect car, perfect house, perfect phone or anything else. The most one can say is “That’s my perfect car/house/phone”, meaning that it perfectly suits your personality and your present needs and circumstances. My perfect car wouldn’t be your perfect car, and so on.

So I’m forced to the conclusion that, no, I can’t come up with a universally perfect time management system. But you can have my perfect time management system and if we’re lucky it will suit you too.

What would my perfect system look like?

That’s easy to answer. It would have to be a system into which I could feed everything I have to do, want to do, or should do. Everything would then come out in exactly the right order, allowing for importance, urgency, and desirability. It would respond immediately to changes in circumstances. It would deal equally well with things I want to do, and things I need to do but don’t want to do. It would reduce resistance to a minimum, and have minimum overhead. It would provide both motivation and momentum. 

Am I right in thinking that NQ-FVP isn’t my perfect system?

Let’s mark it out of 10 for each of the above qualities (bearing in mind that these are my answers for my perfect system and your answers might well be different) 

• Everything I have to do, want to do, or should do. 10
• Exactly the right order, allowing for importance, urgency, and desirability. 6
• Respond immediately to changes in circumstances. 8
• Things I want to do 10
• Things I need to do but don’t want to do. 4
• Reduce resistance to a minimum. 8
• Minimum overhead 7
• Motivation 8
• Momentum 8

That’s 69 points out of 90 or 77%, which isn’t a bad score, but still a fair distance from being perfect.

Are there changes I could make so that NQ-FVP becomes my perfect system?

 I don’t know that I can get it to 100% perfect - is anything? But I can certainly think up some pointers to increase the score. These are all about how I use the system, rather than changes to the system itself.

• Don’t overload it with tasks
  Even the most perfect car won’t take too many passengers or too much weight, and it wouldn’t be the perfect car I want if it did (my car’s a two-seater and that’s the way I want it). It’s exactly the same with a time management system. NQ-FVP will grind to a halt if I put too many tasks in it. The system can enable me to get stuff done more efficiently and effectively, but what it can’t do is get me to do more than I am physically or mentally capable of doing. So I must either avoid putting too much into the system in the first place, or aggressively weed tasks so that my work becomes more and more concentrated and targetted.
  
  
• Don’t overload it with dots
  Dotting too many tasks at a time slows the whole system down and makes it inflexible. I aim to never have more than five dotted tasks at a time. That’s what I’ve got dotted at the moment on my current list of 66 tasks, and includes the one I’m working on at the moment.
  
  
• Scan quickly
  Scanning time is the main overhead in this system. If I scan slowly, weighing every task, it takes an unacceptably long time. But even worse, it encourages me to dot too many tasks. And even worse than that, it takes a long time to correct if I miss a task that I should have dotted. Fewer dots gives much more flexibilty without any penalty.

Conclusion

I think it would be very difficult to improve the actual system of NQ-FVP. Most attempts to do so are trying to cure problems caused by incorrect handling. The quickest way to kill it is to have a huge ponderous list of unweeded tasks, covered in a multitude of dots caused by long exhaustive (and exhausting) scans. Keep the list well-weeded, scan quickly and aim at a maximum of 3-5 dots in the whole list.

Next…

In Part 3 I shall be dealing with how NQ-FVP can be used as a long list, a short list and a no-list system all at the same time.

Some Aspects of NQ-FVP (Part 1)

I’ve said several times on this blog and in the comments that the system that I keep coming back to is NQ-FVP. The name NQ-FVP is derived from the Final Version (FV), through the Final Version Perfected (FVP), and finally  the NQ bit which stands for “No Question”.

NQ-FVP is a clumsy name for sure, but it does reflect how the system was developed, and anyway there are plenty of acronyms flying around which hardly anyone knows what they stand for, e.g. IKEA (Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd) or CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart).

So NQ-FVP it’s going to remain. Click here for the rules.

So what are the distinguishing features which make me come back to this system time after time?  

• It’s relatively fast and relatively simple. There are faster and/or simpler systems, but they lack NQ-FVP’s other features.
• It’s a long list system which feeds a short list system and even sometimes a no-list system.
• It will sooner or later work through your whole list, even if you are constantly adding to it.
• It’s a low resistance system mainly driven by your intuition about when a task is ready to be done. 

Of course the obvious follow-up question is what are the distinguishing features which make me leave this system time after time?

I will answer that in the second part of this article.

How to Think About What's Important

Four rules:

1. Think about it as much and as often as you can.

2. Avoid thinking about anything irrelevant or time-wasting.

3. Take 10-20 minute naps.

4. Get a good night’s sleep

This is all to do with the way the brain works. If you think about something a lot your brain cells will make connections and those connections will get strengthened. So if you think about things which are important to you your brain will automatically produce a web of connections. 

The trouble is that if you think about irrelevant time-wasting stuff, your brain cells will be producing a web of connections about that as well. And there is a limit to how much stuff your brain can deal with at any one time. Do you really want your brain to be full with a web of connections about why x said y to you at the party last night?

Central to the whole process is sleep because it’s when you are sleeping that your brain strengthens the connections of what you have been thinking about, It’s also when it clears out unnecessary stuff. How does it know what’s unnecessary? It’s the stuff you haven’t been thinking about.

I'm Out (But for a Good Reason)!

I’ve had to withdraw from the Lenten Challenge, not because the system I was using didn’t work, but because I got the idea for a new system and wanted to try it out. 

I’m not going to tell you any more about it because I don’t want to distract anyone from the Challenge. Enough to say that it’s a No List variant, and requires the ability to count up to ten (which, looking at the deletions on my list, I apparently don’t have).

Lenten Challenge 2022

FINISHED! Congratulations to those that stayed the course

This year’s Lenten Challenge starts on Wednesday 2nd March and ends on Thursday 14th April, both dates inclusive.

The challenge is to keep to the same time management system for the whole period. You can enter the challenge by nominating which system you are going to follow in the Comments below. The system does not have to be one of mine. You can change your entry up until the start date (your local time).

This is not intended to imply, include or exclude any religious belief whatever.

Entries:

Eiron Page - Productivity Bingo +

Mrs Move Forward - DIT

Brenda - Autofocus 1

Michael von Feld - Autofocus 1

John R - DIT

Adam T - FVP

Aaron Hsu - Time Surfing

Alan Baljeu - GAP (Mark II)

JulieBulie - AF

Will - FVP

Seraphim - AF4R Experiments

tomcal - AF4R Experiments

vegheadjones - FVP

Fintan - DIT

Christoper - Autofocus 1

Brent - Adventure Mode

Paul MacNeil - Simple Scanning

avrum - Choose the Next Task

Caibre65 - Anchored AF2/FIFO Combination

Diana - FVP

Colin - Make Time - Highlight, Laser, Energise, Reflect

Virix - Weighted Randomizer

Sitkeys - AF4R

Mike Brown - Carl Pullein’s 8+2 prioritization and Time Sector system, implemented in Teux Deux

Margaret1 - CHECKLISTS

Eugenia - Simple Scanning

Austin - DMB

Belacqua - Superfocus

Brandon - How to Make Your Dreams Come True

Will - FVP (on MS To Do App)

Paul B from Canada - Spinning Plates

Cameron - Getting Things Done (late entry 7th March)

Mark Forster - Flexible Autofocus

Stabilizing Your Systems

One of the problems many people who visit this website have (including myself) is finding a stable time management system to stick with. 

Here’s a method which may help you in finding one, while still allowing you to experiment with others.

What you will need is an app in which you can drag bullets from place to place within a list. I’m using Roam Research but there are hundreds of others. You probably have one already.

1. Make a short list of time management systems which you feel you might want to use (you can add more at any time to the end of the list)
2. Drag the system you are currently using to the top of the list
3. Use it for as long as you want to
4. Select the next system you want to use and drag it to the top of the list.
5. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4 ad infinitum

The result will be that the systems you most often use will be at the top of the list while the others sink towards the bottom. This should gradually (or not so gradually) have the effect of introducing more stability into your choice of system.

Pressing the Button

I’ve been reading in today’s newspapers about a study at Heidelburg University in which people were shown a succession of images and had to press a button to show whether they considered each image Good or Bad. The purpose of the experiment was to measure the amount of time it took for people of various ages to make decisions of this type. 

According to the press release this involved the participants in three actions for each image:

1) An intuitive decision

2) Pondering it

3) Pressing the button

Apparently after the age of 60 the brain’s speed at carrying this process out declines considerably. As someone considerably older than that I can testify to the truth of the finding!

No further details were given in the articles, but two thoughts struck me immediately. 

The first was that it would be very easy to get a good score by cheating 

The second was that this is very applicable to the speed at which decisions are made from a to-do list about which task to do next.

So how can one cheat? There are multiple ways. For example:

- push the Good button each time. No decision is made so only step 3) is needed.

- push the Bad button each time. Ditto.

- push the Good and the Bad button alternately. Ditto.

The problem with all of these is that it’s obvious you’re cheating. But you can be a little bit more sophisticated.

- push either the Good or the Bad button regardless of what the image looks like. Step 2 - the longest - is left out.

- decide which button to push before the image is displayed. Assuming there is even a small gap between images, only Step 3 would be needed. 

The last one would be the most difficult to detect as cheating. 

Now it’s quite possible that there were measures in the actual experiment which would have prevented any of these happening, but they are not mentioned in the brief description.

So if the speed of the decision can be greatly increased by leaving out steps 1) and 2) how is this applicable to the speed of deciding which task should be done next off a list?

Well, there is one way which I left out. It’s not exactly cheating either. And that is to make an intuitive decision and press the button immediately without pondering it.

So what you are aiming to do is to decide immediately without any second guessing. That takes practice but is quite achievable.

As an exercise write down ten tasks which you could do now. Once you’ve written them down, and without reading through the list, run your finger or a pen rapidly down the list (go as fast as you can while still being able to read the tasks). Stop at any point and then do the selected task for real. Do the same several times again until you’ve got the feel for it. 

That’s how it’s done. And you will almost certainly find that making your choices quickly in this way will also speed up the work you do on the task.

An important point:

When you are running your pen down the list keep going forward. Do not go back if you think you’ve missed a task. if you find yourself thinking about whether you’ve made the correct choice, stop thinking and just do the chosen task.

Question: Was the choice of tasks any worse than if you had spent time pondering them?

What Would You Do If You Had the Perfect Time Management System?

This was originally a comment which I put on a Forum discussion about expressing one’s values. As it was tagged onto the end of the discussion I don’t think many people saw it. Here it is, slightly edited.

The ideal time-management system would not only help you to reach your ideals and goals, but would also help you to find out what your ideals and goals are. As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Imagine for a moment that you found the ideal time management system which banished all resistance and unerringly pointed you to the right thing to be doing at every successive moment in order to achieve your ideals and goals as easily and painlessly as possible. Having found this perfect system, what would you use it for?

You probably wouldn’t use it to watch every series on Netflix while drinking endless six-packs of beer. Or am I being too optimistic?

And ​most of you (I hope) wouldn’t turn into Dr. Evil with dreams of world conquest, shortly to become reality.

My guess is that once you’d started to realise the potential of this amazing system you would try it out on some fairly easy things which you’d always wanted to do, and then, as you gained confidence and experience, you would extend your range while getting a clearer picture of what you were capable of and what you wanted to achieve.

So to me, the sequence is System > Ambitions, rather than Ambitions > System.